Indeed so. It's been a fun spell here – very cold, a few centimetres of snow and plenty of tobogganing in Epping Forest (which looks beautiful right now). 

Ready to see snowdrops popping up – could be a very rapid transition to proper spring looking at the charts.

Roll on spring :)

Doesn't bode well for post-Brexit dietary requirements.

How are the turnips?

Indeed a remarkably warm GFS 6z.  The CET would rocket.

https://www.wetterzentrale.de/en/topkarten.php?map=20&model=gfs&var=17&run=6&time=225&lid=OP&h=0&mv=0&tr=3#mapref

The interesting this here is that the 2018 and 2021 easterlies were both preceded by marginal events from the west that brought a lot more snow. We had ~8cm on Jan 24th 2021 and ~15cm on December 10th (or thereabouts) 2017. 

Writing definitely on the wall now for this is slightly underwhelming cold spell. BBC 5 dayer (I know these things are about as accurate as a chocolate fireguard) has 6c for Saturday and 10c with disgusting amounts of rain and cloud for Sunday.

Winter is over. Roll on Spring.

still plenty of colder options on the GEFS. The upstream pattern still not yet resolved, though odds now strongly favour mild

Yes - what is it with the models of late? they all go for temps into mid teens - there is nothing to suggest this in the Met Office long range forecast or BBC - so is it the models going OTT or the Met Office and BBC not being accurate?

We may see an update from them in the next day or two reflecting the milder output (If it's still there in a day or two). 

The High could easily drift to a more favourable position for cold later. \i think even if we get these warmer temps they're not likely to last, still too early in the season for persistent warmth and colder again later is equally if not more likely.  

In their defence they already said it would turn milder with only the northeast holding onto temperatures near to average. It's in the second part weeks 3&4 they are expecting the return of the cold as the high pressure system drifts westward. 

Hope not.  Full on mild for me now please.

When its this cold I cannot get in the drivers side of my Landie as the door freezes solid and I need to climb over the passenger side.  Very inelegant!

Worth it for the snow but the Chilts have been snowless in this episode!

I love towing people up Cryers Hill - mainly BMW drivers!!

This winter has been consistently cold without delivering real cold.I think this is going to go on until April despite the forcast at present. Expecting Scotland and NE England to be hard hit again before spring summer weather arrives.Whether this winter is the start of a new cluster who knows .

Disappointing (for those who like snow) to see the zeros creeping back into the snow row figures on Brian's GFS ensemble graphs.  I wonder when we'll see our first run with all zeros?

Sunday looking like a complete bake in much of the country.

Not quite true here, but as I said earlier, both this and the last Beast in 2018 were preceded by much snowier periods in the same winters.

Sorry Brian , from a South Chilterns perspective.  

In fact our biggest snowfall was last night when all surfaces were covered temporarily!

Interesting you say that - we had that cold rain easterly earlier in January (which dumped 2 inches of rain here). In years gone past, a degree or so colder, that would have been snow.

At least the "echo easterly", which we're still in, was cold enough for it to be snow this time!

Incidentally one of the odd things of this spell has been GFS - which has consistently underestimated temperatures. (It has -4C for now, for example, for here, whereas it's actually just -0.3C. It had a high of -2C, when it was +0.3C - and so on. I don't really know why it's doing it, but it's been persistent for several days now.)

As we were heading into this spell the GFS showed max temps here reaching -3C on 08/02 and 09/02. I suspected it was underestimating values because if had been correct we were on course for something comparable to Feb 91.  

Do you (or does anyone else) know where the UKMet grib files they are using come from?  The ones on  TWO only go out to 120 and come from NCEP.

Not a bad chart at all..

Spring again by 20/02.